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QuakeMaster33 writes "The first public footage of id Software's upcoming Quake Live title comes in the form of a collection of high definition videos from tournament matches held at QuakeCon 2008. The event held a 1v1 and CTF tournament with prize money totaling $25,000. Included in the video set is the finals match between the 17-year-old Belarusian Alexey "cypher" Yushanevsky and the American John "ZeRo4" Hill. All of the videos are available for download or streaming via Flash video.
QuakeLive, which is currently in the public beta testing phase, is a free, web-based version of Quake III Arena which includes updated graphics and gameplay. On the developer front for QuakeLive, id has plans for custom maps, but mod support is far behind. On the Linux front, id Software's resident Linux guru Timothee Bisset is working on the project, so we can only hope that if the game becomes popular, a Linux client is also made available."

"Web-based" would kind of imply that it was all done in HTML/SVG and Javascript -- probably with a dozen audio tags for the effects.

And while that would be really cool to attempt, I don't think you could really match Quake 3 visuals, not to mention the difficulty (impossibility!) of porting a C/OpenGL rendering engine to SVG/JavaScript.

No, this would need to be supported by some sort of plugin -- if it was to be cross-platform, my first guess would be Flash 10, and my second guess would be Java. But both of these would, again, imply a full rewrite.

So it's probably an ActiveX control, which certainly would explain why it's Windows-only.

That or it's a client which embeds a browser, in which case, it can hardly be called "web-based".

Watching that match between the top players was utterly ridiculous. If the game is that fast, there just seems like no way I could get into it. I prefer more strategy-oriented FPSes to ones that are utter twitch gaming like that was.

Yeah, it's too fast and there aren't enough dark corners to set up a camp. I enjoy games where you can outfox your enemies by picking really random places from which you can hit them, especially enemy bases in CTF.

As a sidenote, I don't really like Q3 because the graphics are so childish and dated. The guns look like toys and the characters aren't fleshed out with detail. Unreal Tournament 3 is so much easier on the eyes and the level detail is gorgeous.

You do realize you're comparing a NINE year old game versus a game released at the tail end of last year, yes? If you were to look back at all the press articles and cover stories when 1999 was breaking news you'd find one superlative after another about how wildly detailed and fantastic the Q3 visuals were at time of their release. Also, Q3 rooted its gameplay in lightning paced deathmatch and CTF action, whereas the Unreal Tournament series has always aimed for a more tactical approach (instagib matches

When Quake 3 was released, I had exactly the same comments about the visuals and the sounds. The guns in Quake looked and sounded heavier, like real weapons. The games in Q3 (and Q2 to a lesser extent) seemed lighter and more toylike. Q3 just made everything look like cheap plastic to me. Possibly this is why I still play Q1, but can't remember the last time I played any of the sequels.

The double-tapping thing didn't appear until UT2003.
Quake 1, 2, & 3 are very comparable to UT99.
Deathmatch is deathmatch and I'd say UT99 deathmatch was even more fast-paced, random, frantic, fun, and spammy than any other game.
The quake games had the element of bunny hopping that became a core element of many advanced players strategies while UT2003 added the strategic element of powerup pills that allowed you to activate a special-ability once you collected 100 of them.

Quake3 is clearly not the game of choice if you're looking for shiny graphics, it's all about the gameplay.

Funny, when Quake 3 was new it was seen largely as a shiny engine that was *mostly* about the graphics. The gameplay was basically a rehash of Quake 1 & deathmatch. People looking for interesting gameplay at the time were holding out for Q3-engine license games like Alice.

I find UT3 to be overly detailed and greatly dislike the fact that it's art direction makes it feel like the neglected bastard half-brother of Gears of War instead of an actual sequel to either ut99 or ut2k4.
I disagree with your opinions on the character and weapon execution but I agree that they should have considered fleshing out a bit more of the details because if you look close at the environments and characters (wearing your 1999 goggles) they really are great concepts and it would have been nice if

Well it does seem to be about as fast as the original Q3, thankfully. I like the slower paced tactical FPS about as much as the fast twitchy ones, but the recent FPS trends seriously piss me off. The tactical games are dumbed down (see all Tom Clancy games) while the others are slowed down and overloaded with unnecessary "experience" and "ranks" bullshit. Why yes I'd love to grind XP points for a month just to be able to use the AK-47! It's nice to see that they didn't fuck around with what worked (and actu

You might want to check out Enemy Territory: Quake Wars(if you're looking for a tactical shooter done right). Its gameplay style is similar to rtcw/original et but with vehicles and huge maps. It does have an experience system but upgrades you earn are only persistent throughout the current campaign(3 maps), and your persistant stats are only for show and record keeping. Saddly its was released around the same time as CoD4 so it never really took off commercially but it has a thriving online playerbase an

Id did release the Quake III Arena source code some time ago, so there are at least plenty of free games based on it floating around. You're right though, I would have much preferred an updated and free Q3A over this stuff. Oh well, I'll just continue to play Generations Arena... it's easily the best Q3A mod ever, and it's only getting better!

Actually read an interview about this where they said they are integrating more Arena into this. Basically its the best of Q3 incl. Arena. They felt not enough people really got to see the Arena stuff the first go around.

You mean "Team Arena", the Quake III Arena expansion pack? I also read that... somewhere. If so, that's good, as I do think Team Arena had many decent ideas. Ultimately, I believe that the expansion pack suffered from simply being too little, too late.

Quake Live *is* Q3 for free, with the only modifications being some advertising (the banners on the walls, etc). Supposedly it is compatible with existing Q3 games, but since I'm not in the beta and I don't have Q3A currently installed, I can't check that personally.

If you want a free Q3 shooter, check out OpenArena or Warsow (but with a funky S symbol that I can't be bothered to look up right now). Both are based on Q3's engine, but are totally free.

Just thought I'd chime in here to provide a voice for the alternative view: I *love* the speed which they chose to pace the game at. If you go back to Quake 1 or 2 (or even 3, though it's slower), the speed is right on that mark. Rapid, fast-paced twitch action. I can appreciate slower paced FPS titles too, but it's been a long time since we've had an FPS that got back to its roots in those terms. Seriously, when was the last time you saw an FPS at this speed? It's been years, so I was quite happy when

Too right - all these "hide behind a box and shoot at each other with endless variations of sniper rifles and other slug throwers" whilst shuffling around the map at the speed of an asthmatic donkey, slavishly carrying out "the mission" really put me off playing FPS.

Let's get back to running around at ludicrous speed like demented Ninjas firing weapons of biblical proportions, in shiny locations, with no plan other than to kill the other guys more than they kill you!

I have what you need!! http://www.netdoo.com/wodx/ [netdoo.com] it has a light saber.. do I have to add something else? ok shamblers, ieds, laser mines, 6 diff air raids, and frantic action. I recommend using the r1q2 client. Has a growing community too. Who needs more than Q2 btw??

Did you ever play the first Rainbow 6? We tried it in multiplayer a few times. Fifteen minutes of getting into position, followed by about twenty seconds of firefight. Probably very realistic, but certainly not fun.

The thing that really made Quake 1 was all of the mods. The game itself wasn't fun for more than half an hour to an hour at a time, but you could intersperse it with Team Fortress, Quake Rally, AirQuake, Quake Horrorshow, Pain Keep, or if you wanted Quake-like gameplay taken to extremes, Kil

It may be fast-paced but Quake 3 1v1 (and by extension Quake Live) is very strategy-oriented. The main concern is about controlling the map by denying the powerups from your opponent which can be done by carefully timing the item spawns so the enemy never gets to see them.

Besides that, there are a number of ways you can play the game of course. Hastily engaging or staying back and avoiding confrontations etc.

Hey, it's called quake for a reason. It isn't that this game doesn't have tactics, it may be your lack of skill and experience making you fail to notice them. Of course, reflexes and muscle memory is more important, but so is knowledge of the map and ability to time weapons and predict respawns.

Exactly what I was thinking. When I see someone playing other FPSes that include 'crawl' or -- dare I say it? walk ferchrissake -- that's hyper realistic, I simply want to smash that monitor. Give me the speed of Quake Classic, anytime, man.

It's not just the speed, it's the amount of skill required. You don't get free kills because the game decided that your next rocket is a critical hit (that kills half the server), and you can't just go around flailing around randomly like a moron and still get points. If you don't know what you're doing then tough shit, you lose. Of course, this sort of philosophy does not really appeal to today's casual gamers.

There aren't that many people in existence who can play at the level of those in these tournaments.
I've heard they're working on a decent match-making system so people of comparable skill should _always_ wind up playing together.

There is a truckload of strategy involved in playing a fast online FPS at professional level. Additionally, camping behind some door with a sniper rifle does not strategy make. Thank god there are still some FPS developers out there who actually make games that demand skill in order to get kills in an online game.

If Quake Live is fast for you, I'd love to see you try to wrap your head around the action that goes on in QuakeWorld.

Amen to that.
I don't want to say that there is absolutely no interesting strategy in realistic-ish FPS games, but it is incredibly weak compared to a deathmatch game in a 1on1, 2on2, or 4on4 setting where everyone involved has a solid understanding of what is important. People who spend the time to figure out tricks to deathmatch games always find creative ways to achieve their goals and deceive their enemies.

You know, there are like billion of drivers on planet but only handful of Formula 1 and NASCAR drivers.

I was once very lucky to play Q3A with top end players of my country, they were at some party or something and I decided to sit and watch rather than playing. Funny is, those guys can also manage not to shoot the noob (you) while killing each other in all that chaos.

Watching such top end players shouldn't make you think that the game is played that way. It is like not playing chess because you watch how Ka

Since the Q3 engine was open-sourced, do they have the right to make a new closed-source client? After viewing these videos, it appears it's quite far from the "new, enhanced quake 3" we were told about: except for the new maps and the chaingun, I cant see any of the new things that are already included in many FOSS ports: blend mapping, bloom, blurring, dynamic lighting,...

As others have said, id is the copyright holder of the original Q3A code, so they can do whatever the heck they want with it. However, the big thing to remember is that, by default, you have the copyright to your code: If you contribute to a Q3A-based OSS project, you retain the copyright, it doesn't get transferred to id unless there's a specific contract. Therefore, id can't use, without permission, the stuff that has appeared in other Q3A-based projects. They'd have to either negotiate a permission from

The comment by JoshJ above leaves me puzzled somewhat, by the naive expectations of the poster.

In the long course of Q3 history as a cybersport discipline, the skill range between just a casual player and a pro like Cooller or Cypher, has grown miles. Meaning, further, even though with QuakeLive id takes apparent steps to bring Q3 for the masses, don't expect the gameplay to be immediately appealing to an uninitiated spectator: it really takes nearly equal skill to appreciate a match between masters. This

Takes nearly equal skill to appreciate a match between the masters? Bullshit. I've been following the competetive 1v1 scene for a long time and I sure as hell don't have that kind of skill but I can still see when someone's skill is unbeliveable just like I can when I watch a sport like hockey. I may miss some details but I can still appreciate it and see a difference between the lesser and better players.